Defend OOTP against my horribly Muggle mind!

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 76390

I feel that the answer is not whether a book is great literature but 
what its effect on you is. 

I first read Tolkien in 1955, a year after the last volume was 
opublished and it grabbed me straight away. For many years I read it 
annually and have now done so at least 25-30 times. Nowadays I don't 
go to it so regularly because of other JRRT stuff which has been 
published posthumously.

One of the things which has always amused my family has been my 
predilection for children's literature. I first read Winnie-the-Pooh 
when I was 25(!) but have always argued that it operates on two 
levels, there being a more subtle humour which can only be 
appreciated by an adult. Other books have crossed my path -  the 
Narnia series by C S Lewis and, a couple which I have always enjoyed 
thoroughly, Alan Garner's "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" and its 
sequel "The Moon of Gomrath" which have a lot to do with magic.

For a while I allowed myself to be swayed by members of my church who 
said that HP was bad and taught children all the wrong things. I 
finally met up with Harry last November when my wife and I and a 
friend with whom we were staying found ourselves at a loose end and 
went to the cinema in Barry (near Cardiff for non-UK readers) and saw 
COS. Very soon after, I watched PS on Sky Box Office and was greatly 
impressed to the end that I bought the then four books in short order 
and read them. I am now going through these four for the fifth time 
(now entering GOF) and have read OOTP three times.

To berealistic, there is a gulf between JRRT and JKR partly because 
of the style and perhaps the depth of the stories. Tolkien is a 
master wordsmith and was basing the epic on a baseload of "myth" 
which he had been amassing for 40 years (at the time when LOTR first 
appeared). His writing is very detailed and his word pictures conjure 
up incredibly vivd pictures in my mind. LOTR however was not a 
children's book on publication although it initially grew out of a 
childern's book.

I have gained more enjoyment out of the Potter books than any other 
juvenile fiction I have read. I think the way in which the books grow 
darker and tackle deeper problems (such as gratuitous killing in GOF) 
is a  tribute to the writer's skill. If we are seeing it from Hary's 
POV, PS shows us a naive, gauche boy taking rentative steps into a 
strange, exciting and unsettling new world. We see him growing in 
confidence (sometimes unfounded!) and experience and the latest books 
are now tackling themes which would not be out of place in fiction 
written specifically for adults.

Frankly, I would rather read something like the books I have 
mentioned or watch things like Star Trek than get involved in themes 
which mirror real life - family rows, affairs, terrorist violence 
etc. Escapist maybe, but the volume of traffic on this site shows 
that many of us can not only enjoy this material but let our own 
imaginations speculate how we might write the next book or how we 
would the characters to develop; we may disagree politely with each 
other over who is going to betray whom whether Petunia is a closet 
witch but it is all very stimulating stuff whether there are split 
infinitives or not. I can handle Tolkien and Rowling and enjoy them 
both absolutely without comparing which of the two worlds are better 
defined or described.

OK, now tell me I'm a long winded rambler who ought to know better....

Geoff